[This was poster earlier here]
It’s that time of the year—time for recaps and predictions for next year. One of the pundits to watch is Sensei Liz Elam of the Global Coworking Unconference Conference.
So, what’s on Elam’s mind this year.
Looking back, she sees a lot of girls in 2019. As in female-oriented coworking operations and the Women Who Cowork alliance. This is part of the continuing fluorescence of what Elam calls “niche” coworking, which I would just call “coworking”.
As a founder of GCUC Elam has been caught in the cultural struggles between “authentic” coworking and the “service office industry”. She seems to be regaining her footing this year, flatly declaring:
And, by the way, “WeWork isn’t coworking”
So, take that!
Elam has also been a leader in advocating that community coworking is an antidote to lonliness, and therefore is a key part of health and wellness.
For 2020, she has some generic predictions (prices will either go up or down, coworking spaces will get larger and smaller).
Sensei Elam has her own views on what will drive coworking growth in 2020, and these are classic Elam:
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Real Estate Costs: Coworking allows you to take it off the books
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Worker Disengagement: 66% of their workers are disengaged. Coworking, on the other hand, makes employees happier, healthier and more engaged.
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Mental Wellness: The most expensive healthcare issue for all corporations globally is the mental health crisis. If connection cures the disease of addiction then community can cure the disease of loneliness. 89% of coworkers reported being happier in a coworking space.
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Attracting and Retaining Talent: Gen Z not only doesn’t want to work in your dated office, they won’t. They need space that they choose.
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She predicts a recession someday, which will “hurt”. My own view is that it will hurt fast and hard, because the gig economy is basically designed to shed workers in an instant. Coworking will dive early and sharply, and I can’t help but think that many operations will fail.
Elam argues that “community” still is “is the secret sauce of coworking” (which it always was). She also asserts that “community” “can’t be measured, seen or touched”. She wants to “level up”, and “figure out how to measure community”.
Excuse me. I was an Anthropology major, and have a degree in Social Psychology. We actually can observe and measure community. <<Call me.>>
She also wants to “scale it [i.e., “community”] in a teachable way”. I’m not sure what that means exactly. However, I do have to point out that “community” is something that doesn’t actually scale up. And, for my money, I wonder why you even want to scale up. The point of community is that you know each other, which is generally limited to 200 people or less.
IMO, the goal is to go wide, not big. We need lots of opportunities for small, local communities (i.e., niches).
Maybe that’s what Sensei Liz is thinking, I’m not sure.
My experience has been that Elam has her head screwed on right, so everyone should pay attention to what she says.
“How long have we as an industry been explaining that WeWork isn’t coworking?”
- Liz Elam, Coworking Megatrend Predictions for 2020, in GCUC Blog. 2019. https://gcuc.co/coworking-megatrend-predictions-for-2020/
(For much more on the Future of Work, see the book “What is Coworking?”)
What is Coworking?
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